The influence of mental models on undergraduate students’ searching behavior on the Web

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This article explores the effects of undergraduate students’ mental models of the Web on their online searching behavior. Forty-four undergraduate students, mainly freshmen and sophomores, participated in the study. Subjects’ mental models of the Web were treated as equally good styles and operationalized as drawings of their perceptions about the Web. Four types of mental models of the Web were identified based on the drawings and the associated descriptions: technical view, functional view, process view, and connection view. In the study, subjects were required to finish two search tasks. Searching behavior was measured from four aspects: navigation and performance, subjects’ feelings about tasks and their own performances, query construction, and search patterns. The four mental model groups showed different navigation and querying behaviors, but the differences were not significant. Subjects’ satisfaction with their own performances was found to be significantly correlated with the time to complete the task. The results also showed that the familiarity of the task to subjects had a major effect on their ways to start interaction, query construction, and search patterns.

论文关键词:Mental models,Information searching behavior,Query construction,Search patterns

论文评审过程:Received 27 June 2007, Revised 6 September 2007, Accepted 8 September 2007, Available online 22 October 2007.

论文官网地址:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2007.09.002